Top 10 Items From Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium

In my review I did not go into any detail on more than one or two items, so here is a list of items that made me go, “Damn, that is awesome and I would so want that if I ever got a chance to play.” I tried to avoid picking just rare/high-level stuff, but for obvious reasons they tended to have a high wow factor.

Frost Brand Weapon (level 8+ rare)
It works on any melee weapon, deals d8’s on crits, and gives you fire resistance of at least 5 (scales by bonus). It has a close-blast encounter attack that deals damage and immobilizes–making it good for defenders and melee strikers–but also has a minor-action encounter that extinguishes fires in a massive burst and allows allies to make saves against ongoing fire damage. The downside is that it always deals cold damage, one of the more common resistances in the game.

Cloak of the Phoenix (level 20+ uncommon)
This is a neck item with a daily power that triggers after you are dropped; enemies within a 3 square radius take automatic fire damage, all effects on you end, and you gain hit points equal to a surge. The downside is that you lose the rest of your surges. Higher level versions restore half your hit points or all of them.

Wand of Fire (level 15+ rare)
Another one of my favorite character archetypes is a tiefling pyromancer/wizard that emphasizes fire magic. The wand of fire lets you maximize your damage dice on a fire attack once per day, and once per encounter you can both exempt all allies from the area effect of a fire attack and cause one adjacent object to catch fire.

Diamond Cincture (level 10 uncommon)
Depending on the item’s level it comes with 1-3 diamonds, with an identical bonus to Fortitude. As a minor action you can spend a healing surge, causing one of the diamonds to crack and darken, which also reduces the bonus to Fortitude by one (they come back after an extended rest, though). I like this because it can basically give anyone wearing the equivalent of a dwarf’s healing surge usage, and it not only takes up the waist slot (the most useless of slots, to me) but it also gives you an item bonus to Fortitude. I cannot see any defender not wanting this.

Ring of X-Ray Vision (level 25 rare)
This blast from the past gives you a bonus to Perception, prevents adjacent creatures from having concealment, and lets you see through objects; 20 feet of cloth, wood, or similar vegetable matter, 10 feet of stone, or 1 foot of metal (except for lead, gold, and platinum). You can sustain the power, but it suppresses the Perception/concealment property, unless you hit a milestone already. It is not such a big deal, because the power is an encounter one.

Guardian’s Whistle (level 4 uncommon)
This low-level wondrous item lets you teleport an ally within 10 squares to any square adjacent to you. Though it can only be used once per day, this would be great for getting an ally into or out of trouble as the situation warrants.

Ebon Armor (level 3+ uncommon)
This grim-dark armor gives you necrotic resistance, but also allows you to gain temporary hit points when an enemy next to you dies. The best part? Those are both properties.

Robe of Useful Items (level 2+ common)
This magic armor can produce a generic, non-magical item of up to 10 gp in value. The power is cited as a daily, but after an hour the item vanishes and you regain the use of it. In the hands of a typical player, this basically removes the need for light sources and having to carry lots of supplies (for example, you can just conjure a rope). In the hands of a creative player? Well, then it could really shine. My only gripe is that higher level versions do not let you conjure more items.

Life-Draining Gauntlets (level 6+ rare)
I am a huge fan of necromancy, and these gauntlets provide a scaling bonus to necrotic damage and let you gain temporary hit points once per day after hitting a creature with a necrotic attack. Simple, but effective.

Potion of Cure Light Wounds (level 1 uncommon)
Formerly an adventuring staple in 3rd Edition, these finally make their appearance, giving you back 1d8 + 1 hit points at the cost of a surge. While not nearly as good as potions of healing, they are cheap at 20 gp a pop. Another good thing is that they work even if you do not have any healing surges left, but only when you are bloodied.

Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium Review

Book Three of the Magic Item Triumvirate packages both the usual suspects and some newer additions into 159 pages. In addition to your typical roster of magic gear you also get new weapons–along with associated feats–armors, and implements, as well as artifacts, cursed items, henchmen/hirelings, story items, an option for increasing an item’s level (and potentially the benefits it grants), and an item list of each item in the book sorted by level and rarity. Frankly it should have included every item from every source, but I’ll take this for now.

This book has in part been done twice already, and in a nutshell has a lot of what you would expect plus some surprises. I like a lot of the new magic items, and the chapters on story items, while not necessarily inspiring me to create items that had no hard mechanics behind them (I was doing that already without “permission”), it did give me some good ideas. If you liked past loot books then this is right up your alley. If all you care about is the crunchy content, then it will all be up on Character Builder and Compendium if you have the patience for it. If you could not give two shits about “moar magic lootz”, then the cover price really cannot justify the flavor content (especially what with all the previews).

So with the brief rundown out of the way, here are some highlights if you are still on the fence.

Chapter 1: Armor
The new armors have already been previewed and nothing has changed in transit: they still require feats and provide dubious benefits.

Chapter 2: Weapons
Weapons on the other hand have not, and while the table largely lists weapons that we already had–broadsword, flail, rapier, and katar come to mind–there are some actually new items on the menu: short spear, pike, and serrated pick. The lance has the Mounted property, which means that you take a -2 to attacks while off a horse, but gain +1 [W] to damage when charging (and mounted). They are also all weapons that small creatures can use normally (which is handy for the pike as it is a two-hander).

Since people have been wondering about the new expertise feats, I’ll spoil them here:

• Flail Expertise: You can knock a target prone instead of sliding if an attack lets you slide.
• Pick Expertise: You gain a scaling damage bonus against creatures larger than you.
• Polearm Expertise: You gain a static bonus to defenses against charge attacks.

There is also a bunch of “strike” feats that sometimes give benefits when using power strike with a weapon category, but some require you to forego the damage bonus.

Chapter 3: Implements
No new feats or implements from what I could tell. Wand of wonder is back as a level 7 rare. It lets you teleport a target when you roll a 6 on the crit dice, and once per day you can roll a d6 for a random benefit such as flying, concealment due to butterflies, or creating 2d10 fake gems next to a target you hit with the wand. Seems to capture the spirit of the wand from older editions, giving you effects that are useful, harmful, or…silly. An expanded table would be rad.

Chapter 4: Magical Gear
A handful of miscellaneous items for the rest of the slots, plus consumables like potions (including potions that heal variable amounts of hit points) and an actual scroll (hopefully we can get more of these in a Dragon article).

Chapter 5: Artifacts and Curses
The chapter opens up with a rehash of the text wall from Dungeon Master’s Guide before seguing into some new artifacts, including classics like the codex of the infinite planes and jacinth of inestimable beauty.

The previews on item curses and story items already told you basically everything that you need to know, though story items gives you a lot of examples; in particular I liked the True Name, which has a story obstacle of a super-powered creature, and the property that weakens the creature or forces it to obey you if you intone its name.

Chapter 6: Adventuring Gear

This chapter includes mundane stuff like ball bearings, chalk (and slate), cold-weather and desert clothing, gambling cheats, a jar of glowworms, and a 10-foot pole (along with a side-bar on improvising gear). There are also items that give you bonuses, such as a bestiary, footpads, and gambling cheats (including another sidebar on gambling). In addition to carryouts, there is also a table on buying buildings–from cottages to castles–and dealing with “trade goods”. The section on alchemy items is exactly what you would expect.

Appendices 1-4
Information on hirelings, henchmen, random tables for magic item stories, using levels as a reward to boost existing magic items (allowing players to keep the same item), and that item list I mentioned at the start are all found here. I really like the idea of leveling up magic items, and the table makes it easier to guage things.

Excerpt: Item Curses

In past editions I never used cursed items unless a pre-published adventure specifically mentioned them because in most cases they were a minor nuisance; any party with a cleric could basically get rid of it after taking a nap, assuming that no one had a remove curse spell prepared/scroll on hand (if the item even required it). Of course if your campaigns ever cranked it up to 11, then analyze dweomer became an option and cursed items stopped being a liability (which was just keeping in theme with older-edition magic’s ability to just side-step problems entirely).

4th Edition’s model for curses is making them category specific item properties that can never be detected, and remain dormant until the curses’s trigger is met. For example a periapt of foul rotting acts normal until you take a specific amount of damage, at which point it infects you with a disease. So, pretty similar to how 3rd Edtion operated, but easier to apply to items. The key difference is that once you figure out that an item is bad, you can try to strip away the curse and “fix” them with the same Arcana check, making them much easier to deal with than in past editions.

I have only just started including cursed items in my Heirs of Ruin campaign, partially because I feel that it fits with Dark Sun’s concept of magic as a flawed art, but also because I wanted to try and make my players make some hard choices; yeah, those iron armbands give you a damage bonus, but when you are bloodied they give you a damage penalty. I had intended to give players opportunities to restore them to normal, but with a bit more effor than a simple, low-risk skill check.

Really this is only issue I have with item curses as I currently understand them, and and will rule in most cases that must have access to Enchant Item and/or need to go on quests in order to change some cursed items back to normal. At the least, they are going to have to choose between living with the curse or burning ritual components.

Excerpt: New Armor

I just got around to posting about the weapon excerpt today, and we are already at new armor. You will need to actually scope out the pdf preview to get any hard mechanics, which includes full stats for all the suits of armor that were still “missing” (well, except for the chain shirt). Aside from filling in the gabs, new armors are further differentiated from the old by having either the tough, durable, or barbed property.

Tough lets you turn the first crit you suffer in combat to a normal hit, durable reduces damage you take from the first attack in an encounter (and has to be repaired afterwards to regain the property), and barbed causes a creature to take damage based on your level when you escape a grab, or that creature escapes your grab.

So, that is pretty cool. I also really dig the robe of the archmage (level 20 rare); it gives you a bonus to Fort and Will, lets you prep a utility spell of your level or lower for free, and lets you lose half your hit points in order to max out your damage on the next arcane attack you make. 

Excerpt: New Weapons

In addition to magic items it looks like feats are also on the menu at Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium. Though we get a dozen names, only two of the “strike specialization” feats are actually shown, which let you reduce bonus damage from power strike in order to lump on some other benefit like dazing or attacking Fortitude instead of Armor Class. Considering books that I would assume were intended for DMs have had paragon paths in the past, this does not come across as too odd to me, though I am curious as to whether or not people are going to label this book as an “essentials” book by virtue of it having content for Essentials classes.

Another juicy bit previewed is a flame tongue weapon, which is a level 10 rare item with some badass stuff; the crit damage is slightly higher than usual at a d8, it grants fire resistance, once per encounter after you down an enemy, each adjacent enemy takes automatic damage (great for minion cleaning), and it has an encounter attack that deals fire damage plus ongoing fire damage to a close blast. As an added bonus the fire resistance and damaging features scale with the weapon’s enhancement bonus. The only real drawback is that you cannot turn off the fire damage part (though despite the flavor content stating that they glow brightly, it neither provides illumination nor penalizes your Stealth).